Onwards and Upwards!

Things goin well here!

Chilling at the dunes!

We are now in Belem, a bustling port city in the north of Brazil on the mouth of the Amazon river. This ´river´ has to be seen to be believed, it´s monstrous. Arrived here late lastnight after a 14 hour busride from Sao Luis. The journey didn´t seem all that long though for some reason - getting used to ´em I guess! As luck would have it, the hostel we went to has been closed down for a while (can´t rely on the guide-books all of the time!). However, a local lady who was out walking noticed we were in a spot of bother and showed us to a nearby street with some accomodation. Kind of wish she hadn´t though - it´s been raining heavily here today and there´s a leak in our room - not to mention the fact that it doesn´t have any glass in the windows! But then it costs less than a tenner a night...:)

Freddy from France

The last couple of weeks since the Carnival have been very good although some of the travelling has been rough enough - they´re not big into paved roads in some of the places around here!

We flew to Fortaleza from Salvador before making our way to Jericoaracoa, a nice beach town. Spent a couple of days there but unfotunately it rained for most of the time - the sand streets turned in flowing streams at the drop of a hat! The journey from there to the lovely town of Parnaiba was a unique experience consisting of trucks, rafts, boats and minibuses! The boat was a nice big one with loads of hammocks, but didn´t it break down so we had to spend about 5 hours squashed in the tiny replacement - and it had no lights so there we were like drug runners headin up this huge river in total darkness - thought I was going to lose my mind that night!!

Hee hee

In Parnaiba I was sitting on the bonnet of a car waiting for Gretta when a local man, Alfonso, approached me and asked if I needed any help - I must have been looking a bit lost! He made us (Gretta, our travelling buddy Fredo and I) sit down with him and his buddies from work and we drank and talked for a few hours (with Alfonso interpreting!)before being given a whistle-stop tour of the town with his wife in his cool little jeep - she had to keep a good eye on him since he´d had a few beers! They took us to a great restaurant and dropped us to the door of out hostel after - well pleased with that!

Interesting!

Next stop was Barrinheiras, the base town for the incredible National Park of Lencois Maranheses. It´s not a park in the natural sense of the word in that there are no mountains and trees. This place consists of gigantic sand-dunes with magnificent crystal clear blue lagoons interspersed throughout. Some of the landscape here reminded me of Star Wars a bit!

So tomorrow we get on the move again, heading for Manaus, bang in the middle of the Amazon. Our plan is to take a 5/6 day boat up into Peru - not sure if I´m lookin forward to that at all!

Anyway, sure I´ll let ye know how we get on!

Tschao!

Me and Frodo on our little boat

More hee hee hee!

Paradise